Video Transcript: Reflection

Welcome back to the last part of week six. This week is a little bit different, and  that's because it's been all about being known, and I want to share a story about being known, and then we're going to do a reflection, and that's this part of this  section. So this is my story of being known. I didn't think it was that important to  

be known or to be vulnerable. When I was personally going through mental  health issues, when I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder at 14 years old, I  ended up isolating myself from most of my friends and most of the people  around me. I kept playing in the band that I was playing in. I kept a few close  friends, but in large part, I isolated. I can keep normal conversations with my  friends going, but I couldn't keep really close friends, and a lot of that was being  14 to 16 years old, not knowing how to prioritize those relationships, not  knowing how to take care of them, and not knowing who I was. But I learned my  lesson, and then when things got really hard later in life, I can't tell you what my  friends meant to me, because they meant more than I can say. I started  Seminary in 2009 and in the fall of 2009 Eugenia started having problems. She  started having issues around depression, and I didn't know what was going on.  We'd been married for two and a half years. At that point, this was new to me  that she would struggle like this. I had been seen as the unstable one of the two  of us. I was in seminary, and I remember talking to my friends. I had three or  four friends that I talked to on a really regular, regular basis, my friend Anthony,  my friend Mark, my friend Steve and my mentor Michael and my mentor John  and those five guys knew everything there was to know about me at all times. I  had to have so many because there was so much to keep them up with. And it  wasn't every day that they were available. If I needed to chat, Eugenia started  talking about how she didn't want to be here anymore, not in the marriage, but  alive, and how she wanted to die. She started talking about how it would be  easy to throw herself in front of a bus or something like that. And I started  getting really worried that my wife wasn't going to be alive anymore. I started  talking to my friends. I had been talking to my friends. I was already going to  counseling. I was already a mess inside. I was dealing with my own identity,  which felt like it was falling apart. I felt like I was trying to rebuild and recreate  myself from nothing. I was doing serious hard work, and now I didn't know what  was happening with my wife. So the good part about being in grad school is that you see them every day. It's like seeing your co workers every day. And the  other great thing about grad school is there weren't actually that many  responsibilities. We had a lot of work to do, but there was a lot of loose time.  There was a lot of freedom in that time. So I could take 10 minutes to catch  someone up, or 15 minutes to do something. So I did during that time. Those  guys kept me afloat from Eugenia, things started to escalate. And when things  started to escalate with her, my mental health started to take a nosedive,  because I was so worried about her that I didn't know how I was going to react. I was nervous all the time. I was anxious because I didn't know if I was going to 

do something wrong. I had incredible anxiety, and that started manifesting all the time. I started struggling in school with anxiety and depression because life was  just hard at home and it was carrying over. It wasn't my bipolar disorder, it was  just life was hard, and through that, I saw Steve every day, and Steve would just  say, Hey, I got you. He didn't have any wisdom or resources around this stuff.  Still single, but he had my back. I talked to my friend Mark, and Mark would just  say, Dude, I. Get it. And Mark was a therapist, really good one too. He  understood really well what it was to go through suffering like this, and he just  walked me through it. Well. He wasn't my therapist. He was just one of my good  friends, my friend Anthony, walked through me, walked through this stuff with me every step of the way. We walked through hard times together, and he was just  there as a supportive guy. He was also my coolest friend, because someone like me can always use a friend like Anthony, who was that terribly cool. Michael was my mentor, and he basically cried with me and sat with me. And John was my  other mentor, and he showed me where God was in the mess I needed every  one of those guys to make it through that year, because there were times where  I would get a phone call and I would fall apart, like the day I got a call from  Eugenia's school psychologist that said, Hey, your wife is suffering from suicidal  ideation. You need to get her help right now. My first phone call was to my  counselor Clint. My second phone call was to one of those guys, and I don't  remember which one. I just remember that I needed to talk to somebody, and so I reached out. I remember reaching out a lot over the next coming days and  weeks and months. And it wasn't all hard stuff. Steve and I got together and  talked about silly things and just had fun. Life was heavy at home, but it could be fun. Anthony and I got together and played Ultimate Frisbee with some of our  friends from seminary. It was great. Mark and I got together and just chatted,  and he was a deep, deep, deep well of just knowledge and love and care. Clint  walked through all of it with me as my counselor. Michael walked through it with  me as my friend. John walked through it with me, almost as a dad. There come  times where you just need people, and there's no way around that. That's not a  bad thing. Like we said, You're created for community, and when you need your  community, it's there for you. People can remind you that there's still really funny things in the midst of mental health issues. People can remind you that you still  matter when you're in the middle of going through something like this, people  can remind you of who you are in the middle of these things, and sometimes  you'll get a reminder that you've done the work between therapy and your loved  ones and friends. I remember laying down one night for bed. Eugenia was laying down on the other side of the bed. She felt like she was a million miles away. At  that point, I was really worried about her dying by suicide, but I remember  thinking in that moment, am I okay? Am I okay if she goes and I wasn't. Why  should I be? But I do remember this profound feeling of, I am God's beloved  son, and whatever happens, somehow it'll be okay. That was because of my 

community, and that was because of my work. That was because people  believed in me and sowed into me hard, and I was willing to do the work to  believe them. From that day forward, I've always tried to keep a group of people  around me who know me and who care for me. That was all the way up through  the beginning of starting a nonprofit, through running that nonprofit for almost a  decade, and then when we moved to be closer to family, some of those folks  dropped off, and I've had to start building new relationships with people, build a  new cohort of friends who know what it is to be with me and who know me  deeply, but I'm still willing to go through the process. Willing to looking to pour in, because I know it's not just about the hard times, like, Who do you call?  Because it's Thursday and you got off work early and your kids aren't home and  you want to go do something, who do you call? Who do you call? Because you  want to go do something fun with them. There's a lot of intentionality around  community, but we can call them friends, that's it. They're people you want to go  deep with, because they're your friends, and it's your choice to love them like  family. So with that, I wanted you to take account of your life and what that looks like. I have a couple of my guys right now. I have Nate, I have Brian, I still have  Michael, I still have John, but some of my group of friends has basically  reformed as because we moved, we're no longer in proximity. It's harder to keep in touch, but I'm still working on it, and so should you. So who knows you  deeply? Who are your people? Who is your Michael, who is your Anthony, who  are the people that you count at any time, and who do you share the hardest  parts of your life with? These are not just buddies that you can play ball with or  frisbee, if you're me, or music, these are the good these are the people that you  share the hardest parts of your life with, because you care. This is intentional  relationship building on a deep level. And the next question, are you afraid of  being known, or does it help you come alive in the garden when Adam was  known, there's no question that it made him fully who he was, that he came alive because he was known. It didn't hurt him. It helped him because it was who he  was so for you, the same question exists, being known, I think would help you.  What do you think? So do the work? Invest in those relationships come alive.  You don't know what's going to happen when you're really, really going to need a friend, not just want one. I never wanted to be in a situation where I needed a  friend. I always wanted to be in a situation where I wanted friends. But at this  point, I found myself in a number of situations where I needed a friend, and it's  been so good to be able to lean on people I could love and trust and count on. I  always pray the same for you.